Revival Living #5: Covenant of the Law

Exodus 20 -- Here I am going to note only that this was a covenant with:

• a specific nation: It was a suzerain-vassal treaty, an established form in those days. The format was not so terribly different from the US Constitution, in that there is a broad generalization of the sort of legal policy the suzerain held, and there would be a more specific set of laws that follow from it. The laws would be specific to that nation, and to their location, fitted to their circumstances.
• at a specific time: It only applies while the vassal nation keeps the treaty, and the suzerain does not rescind it, or replace it.
• and its purpose has been fulfilled in Christ.

Many of its requirements are hard to apply in a different climate and land. It has no hold on anyone who does not enter into Judaism. Those who still live by this covenant can expect to receive only what the Law promised: peace, prosperity, and safety. You will also be in a good position to understand what true peace, true prosperity, and true salvation is in Christ, because the Law foreshadowed that. The Law does not include personal salvation.

It is important to note again here that the Rabbinical code that interpreted the Law of Moses was supposed to be subservient to that Law. When Alexander the Great of Ancient Greece passed through in 323 BC, he heavily encouraged the folks living in that land to accept Greek culture. Upon conquering Egypt, he built the City of Alexandria out in the Nile Delta, and made it a powerful center of learning, endowed with a massive library of whatever books (mostly in scroll form) were available then. There grew up in that city tremendous wealth, and Jewish residents held a lot of that wealth. It became the style for them to copy Greek culture, including reading and adapting Greek philosophies into their Jewish faith. It was here born the concept that Grecian logical forms could bring forth an interpretation of the Law of Moses that actually took precedence over it (Mark 7:1-13). It is this massive and corrupt re-interpretation of the Law which was impossible to keep. The actual Law of Moses was doable (Deuteronomy 30:11-14).

Other possible covenants in Scripture are in dispute. We do know that there was a body of revealed knowledge before Abraham, accurately known, but incomplete. It seems to stem from the time of Shem (Genesis 4:26). When Balak summoned a scholar from Mesopotamia -- an expert in Jewish religion as known before the Law -- we find the expert did have an accurate knowledge of what was required prior to Moses (Numbers 22-24). That school in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley was, by the way, the same school of religion which produced the Magi who visited Judea for Jesus' birth.

The greatest difficulty today is getting Christians to see that nothing in the Law of Moses was aimed at making one personally right with God. The Law was no more than a means to ritual purity. This ritual purity reaped ritual blessings. Along the way, it was hoped that Jews would recognize that to be truly right with God required first that one have a desire for it. While that may seem obvious to some, keep in mind that many Jews in Jesus' day felt that being right with God was mostly a matter of birthright, and they never gave much thought to caring about God as a Person. They scoffed at the idea that God had a standard far above the Law of Moses (Matthew 19:3-9).

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Ed Hurst
15 June 2003, revised 06 November 2003

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